Research Interests
My research explores how language plays an integral part in the processes of
constructing individual and group identities. The newest direction for my
work is in onomastics, the study of proper names. I am interested in the
experiences newcomers to Canada have when their names do not fit into the
legal, institutional and conventional frameworks for the composition,
spelling and pronunciation of personal names. I am developing a new research
program that will analyze stories about these experiences and the influence
names have on the way individuals see themselves and others. See
[here] for a possible opportunity to work as
a graduate research assistant on this project.

Meanwhile, I continue to investigate the multiple
meanings of weather and climate forecasts in different sociocultural
contexts in rural communities of Northeast Brazil.
Predictions are communicated and interpreted in particular ways that both
reflect and challenge ideas about who is an expert, whose predictions are
authentically traditional, and who is a “liar”. I integrate theoretical
dimensions of linguistic and cultural anthropology in analyses of how
weather-related communicative practices are tied to particular historical,
social, environmental and epistemological contexts. An ethnographic and
discourse-based perspective highlights communication issues emerging in
these domains where science, local knowledge, culture and subjective
experience intersect. In addition to discourse analysis of weather
predictions, talk about agriculture and verbal expressions of traditional
knowledge, other research areas that interest me include communication
between science and the public, cultural aspects of natural resource
management, and vulnerability of rural and Arctic populations to
weather-related hazards. As an active member of Weather and Society
Integrated Studies (WAS*IS), an
interdisciplinary applied research group, I am working to improve the
integration of social and natural sciences to benefit users of weather
information in both the public and private sectors.